{"id":199392,"date":"2019-12-19T06:33:20","date_gmt":"2019-12-19T06:33:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/democrat-nos-say-party-didnt-make-impeachment-case-against-trump.html"},"modified":"2019-12-19T06:33:20","modified_gmt":"2019-12-19T06:33:20","slug":"democrat-nos-say-party-didnt-make-impeachment-case-against-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/political\/democrat-nos-say-party-didnt-make-impeachment-case-against-trump.html","title":{"rendered":"Democrat ‘no’s’ say party didn’t make impeachment case against Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Wednesday\u2019s impeachment vote against President Donald Trump posed a political test for 31 House Democrats who represent districts that backed Trump in the 2016 presidential election, as Republicans warned that those lawmakers could face a backlash if they supported the effort to remove the president from office. <\/p>\n

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In the end, only three of the 31 voted against one or both of the articles of impeachment that accuse Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. <\/p>\n

Representative Tulsi Gabbard, who represents a safely Democratic district in Hawaii, voted \u201cpresent\u201d on both charges. <\/p>\n

The three who voted \u201cno\u201d said they were not convinced of the case against Trump. The two articles of impeachment allege the president abused his power in dealings with Ukraine and obstructed Congress\u2019 attempts to investigate. <\/p>\n

Trump \u201chas not committed a crime,\u201d Representative Collin Peterson of Minnesota, one of the \u201cno\u201d votes, said last Saturday. <\/p>\n

Peterson said most people in his rural Minnesota district were not bothered by allegations that Trump withheld funds from Ukraine to push for investigations against a Democratic political opponent because they do not think the United States should provide foreign aid at all, Minnesota Public Radio reported. <\/p>\n

Peterson\u2019s district voted for Trump by a whopping 30 percentage points in 2016. <\/p>\n

Representative Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey voted no and told reporters after the vote that he will announce in coming days whether he will leave the Democratic Party. <\/p>\n

The impeachment vote would boost Trump\u2019s prospects in the 2020 presidential election, he said. \u201cHis chances are quite frankly going to be even higher,\u201d Drew told reporters. <\/p>\n

Jared Golden an ex-Marine and freshman lawmaker from Maine, voted \u201cyes\u201d on abuse of power and \u201cno\u201d on obstruction of Congress. <\/p>\n

Golden\u2019s district voted for Trump by some 10 percentage points in 2016.\u00a0He said in a statement on Tuesday that Trump had crossed a \u201cclear red line\u201d by asking Ukraine to help him win re-election next year. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no doubt this is an impeachable act,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Gabbard\u2019s \u201cpresent\u201d vote, neither supporting nor opposing either article of impeachment, was true to the go-it-alone reputation that has made her a polarizing figure among the 15 Democrats running for their party\u2019s presidential nomination. <\/p>\n

The Iraq war veteran has won praise from Trump supporters and Russian state media. Gabbard, who in October announced that she will not seek re-election to the House next year, has not polled above single digits in the Democratic presidential nominating race. <\/p>\n

In a statement, she said she believed Trump was guilty of wrongdoing but did not want to support an effort that drew only Democratic support. <\/p>\n

Reporting by Susan Cornwell; Additional reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Andy Sullivan and Leslie Adler<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feeds.reuters.com\/~r\/Reuters\/PoliticsNews\/~3\/DMYLwc0ku9g\/democrat-nos-say-party-didnt-make-impeachment-case-against-trump-idUSKBN1YN08Z<\/a>\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Wednesday\u2019s impeachment vote against President Donald Trump posed a political test for 31 House Democrats who represent districts that backed Trump in the 2016 presidential election, as Republicans warned that those lawmakers could face a backlash if they supported the effort to remove the president from office. In the end, only three […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-199392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}